Well, if the OP knows The Daily Show with Jon Stewart so well, he should probably have heard that he usually refers to FOX "News" as FOX Opiniotainment. That says it all... 

I almost fell off my couch laughing when Glen Beck stated "close to tears" that this is not the USA he used to live in any longer, referring to the public health care issue. Or when I heard they're giving Sarah Palin a commentary show...

This was great, really...  Next time, pick stories to bash by some sort of random selection, like a dart board!

Exxon hadn't filed their income tax yet, so obviously they hadn't recorded it.  An idiot writing an article makes a misstatement that is obviously wrong, and you jump on Fox News for not treating it like a major news story.  Seriously now, the IRS would audit a fortune 500 company at the drop of a hat.  How can your brain stop working long enough to convince yourself that Exxon is cheating the government out of billions of dollars in tax revenue in such an obvious fashion as to not pay them at all?  Getting a refund when they filed just means they were high on their estimated earnings and paid too much over the year.  They get penalized if they fall too far short as well, so the refund is likely a recurring phenomenon every year.

Income tax is a minor portion of their tax burden as well, they have massive excise taxes, so your inaccurate characterization of a retracted article needs to be corrected as well.

So, 47% of us really aren't paying any income taxes(I'm one of them) while Exxon paid upwards of $80 billion worldwide between the various sources, and you've blindly called them on something they got right.  Fox has fewer inaccuracies in their reporting than the other cable news networks do.  It's been shown on multiple occasions.  All the ranting and raving in the world wont make you right, it just means you're biased to the point of being unfair.  They do have a bunch of sensationalized idiocy, but they're not doing any worse of a job than the next guy.

Their use in the Daily Show is entirely explainable.  Stewart likes picking on them, for entirely logical reasons.  First, he is admittedly a liberal and is often in agreement with the biased viewpoints on the other stations so they don't seem biased to him.  Second, when he picks on MSNBC, he has to explain his jokes.  No one actually watches the source material aside from the developmentally stunted retards that wont be able to tell it's a joke even after the explanation.

Edit: When did Murdoch become a radical right winger?  He's definitely tilted towards the Republican party in his expenditures, but he's backing the progressives more often than the conservatives.  He's a long time donor to plenty of democrat bigwigs, especially in the northeast.

If you were factually accurate, I'd go with the document from the IRS.  You're not.  The article was going off SEC filings first of all, and was wrong.

Read it yourself.  Go to the financial statements index via "Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules" in the table of contents, and click on "Income, Sales-Based and Other Taxes".  They clearly denote their federal tax burden at the time of the 10-k filing.  They'll have done more when they filed their returns.

Edit:  Assuming the forum isn't having a meltdown on me.

A less direct, but more permanent url.

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/secfilings.asp?ticker=XOM:US

Exxon is a part of the remnants of Standard Oil, they're headquartered in Texas...

Busted!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/11/jon-stewart-catches-sean_n_353447.html

FOX is in the same realm as MSNBC...just in the opposite corner.  Aside from ideologies they are identical with the exception that FOX makes at least some attempt to occasionally air dissenting voices.

People usually get offended when "their" side is bashed unjustly but are also usually oblivious to to injustice when it is done by them to those they disagree with.  I have three teenage sons and through talking to them and their friends over the years have learned that the majority of their informed opinions [i.e., things they have not learned first hand] are simply reflective views of what someone one on the internet has said--not a compilation of different views accompanied by studied facts that resulted in their own conclusions--simply regurgitated and almost verbatim arguments accepted as authoritative and final because the person sounds smart and particularly shares some views they already came into the discussion with at the start. 

"I think war is a bad thing and killing is wrong."...therefore, the website devoted to how evil all Republicans are because they began a war shows that all Republicans are "indeed evil.".  They then go on form this conclusion, "Since all Republicans are evil, they can't be trusted and therefore are always wrong.".  You end up with a person who simply nods his head with the established convention of his peers and facts and balance are no longer needed to sustain one's biased view--they are only useful to prove the other view as "wrong".

That's essentially what this thread and a few others here are about.  I understand the offense at FOX's often exaggerated and obviously overheated rhetoric for ratings coveage but I am just as offended that only FOX offends.  I find other equally offensive coverage on other networks that match or exceed FOX in hubris and ratings grabs--MSNBC foremost among them and a perfect example.

The sad thing is it goes beyond news rhetoric and straight to political rhetoric as well.  Many are quite willing to blindly believe what they are told by "their" party and equally willing to refuse to consider what the "other party" says--even if they may have a point.

O'Reilly, Maddow, Beck, Oberman, Limbaugh and even The View sometimes are spot on in some of the things they say.  Other times they are raging idiots--and that would be all of them..not just the ones "we" have decided are right. 

Politics has tapped into this ignorant and emotion based way of thinking and has turned the manipulation of it into an art form (of the lowest sort).  Sadly people buy right into it.  All threads such as this which start with, "Prove me wrong but you but you can't disagree ith my premise" are mirrored examples of the stupidity of political arguments at this time and such stupidity is dangerous in a free country.

I would love to see an intelligent presentation of a reason to BELIEVE something rather than pages of heated, "Those stupid idiots--look how bad they are!".  I can launch a succesfult hate topic with lots of views with no effort (and make them more credible by posting stats and charts) but why would I waste anyopne's time doing so?  Something you learn in early in sales is, "Bashing the other guy's product  doesn't make your sale.".  You have to actually sell your own product in order to get them to buy it.  The fact that the other product is bad doesn't make yours good.

There are smart people who can make a case for their views  and their are smart people who can always complain about someone else's views and hout loudly reasons to not listen to them.  Everyone wants to be king but few want to be genuine worthy laborers. Speaking for my own country--the U.S.--we better start learning how to be a nation again or we are going to become a divided state.  I'd cite some points from the founding fathers but many see that as simply a "knee-jerk defense".

Our aspiring "new founders" are much more informed and intelligent than oursleves or the original ones--just as they always tell us they are.